


The Heaviest Chains

by Colubrina



Series: Rare Pair Harry Potter One Shots [9]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Cutting, Don’t copy to another site, M/M, SpookyScaryDulceWeen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-21
Updated: 2019-10-21
Packaged: 2020-12-27 22:31:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21126317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Colubrina/pseuds/Colubrina
Summary: Tom Riddle binds his followers -- and one in particular -- by giving them what they are ashamed to want.





	The Heaviest Chains

Tom stood at the window and ran the knife over his fingers. The blade, as sharp as magic and hate could make it, left welling red in its wake for only a moment. Then immortality took over, and the wounds healed.

"My Lord?" Abraxas Malfoy, all obsequience, hovered in the doorway behind him. Tom wondered, sometimes, if the man ever fantasized about chopping him into so many pieces he couldn't recover. Did he realize if he kept a heart pounding away, attached to a body continually decimated, he'd free himself?

Probably not. Abraxas wasn't the most sophisticated thinker. Or, perhaps, he just wasn't cruel enough to conceive of such a vicious solution. More likely, he simply didn't want to be liberated. The heaviest chains are the ones we crave. Locks we put on ourselves are unpickable.

"Blessed Samhain," Tom said. Abraxas made the polite sound that meant he didn't follow. "Halloween," Tom said. "Happy Halloween."

"Quite," Abraxas said, relieved. "Candy and hobgoblins and all. Was that why you summoned me, my Lord?"

Tom turned, knife still in hand. Abraxas did well, keeping his face pleasantly inquisitive and his eyes away from the silver glinting in his master's hands. A year ago, he'd have stared at the blade even as his trousers tented and his throat bobbed. Two years ago, he'd have already had tears burning in his eyes. "Is that why you wished to be summoned?" Tom asked. "To share a quick glass of whiskey and a handful of children's sweets?"

He was sure that was what Thoros was doing. Licorice whips and whiskey, and probably a Muggle girl who'd go home with her pockets lined with gold, unsure whether she'd fallen in with fairies on this, the night of the thinnest veil, unsure how she'd gotten the bruises on her thighs and neck. She'd have enjoyed every minute she wouldn't remember. 

The holes in her memory would haunt her far more than knowledge she'd laughed with a handsome man who'd taught her things she'd liked. She'd probably live in fear of what hadn't even happened for the rest of her sad, Muggle days. It was one of the things Tom liked best about Thoros: the delicate touch of his sadism. 

"I am yours to command, my Lord," Abraxas said. "Do you wish me to pour you a drink?"

"You wish me inebriated?" Tom asked.

Abraxas went paler than usual at that, his white skin becoming downright ghostly. When Tom let his control off the leash, even a little, the results could take weeks for even a skilled Healer to correct. 

Not that Abraxas hadn't wallowed in every moment of it. 

"If that is what you desire," he said.

The idea was tempting. Seeing this pure-blooded scion bleed under his hands brought Tom a vicious pleasure that rivaled the day he'd murdered his first, and after a glass of the absurdly expensive whiskey Abraxas kept in the cabinet, he'd be primed to cut deeper, push harder, dig further to find what it was that made that blood so very, very pure and thus so much better than his, tainted by his father, damned by his mother. Sometimes, with Abraxas' blood on him, he felt something almost like love.

Hate and love were very similar, after all.

And desire, too.

Still, Halloween always made him uneasy. He wasn't sure why. It was the day he caught glimpses of black dogs out of the corner of his eye, and if he pulled a card from a fortune-telling deck, it would be death or the fool. Every time. Every year. It wasn't a good day to let his edge slip away into a glass. 

"I think not," he said.

Abraxas looked relieved and disappointed. "Shall I go?" he asked.

Tom smiled then and pushed the tip of his knife into the fleshy tip of one thumb. It fascinated him how it could still hurt even when he knew the wound would heal in moments. Abraxas lost his battle of control and let his eyes rest on the knife and the blood. "I think you need to stay," Tom said. "But if you want to preserve that shirt, I suggest you take it off."

Abraxas' hands shook as he undid one mother-of-pearl button at a time and set the shirt aside, on an armchair with a seat his grandmother had embroidered. The tiny black thread-crows looked up and laughed as he draped the spotless linen over them. He knelt, then, his hands clasped behind his neck, his knees sinking into the thick carpet. "Please," he whispered.

Tom Riddle bound his followers by giving them what they were ashamed to want. He did that now, on this sacred night, cut, after cut, after cut. Happy Halloween.


End file.
